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Raul Ruiz said that like America cinema has been discovered many times. The
same can be said for semiotics, and for the notion of the arbitrariness of
the sign.

Platos dialogue on semiotics, Cratylus, considers arbitrariness in his idea
that some signs - in particular words - signify by convention (thesei)
rather than by nature (phusei). I assume the scholastic semioticians would
have been familiar with this topic too -  Rabelais  certainly has Panurge
parody the rather arbitrary signs of an English semiotician and outdo him in
a signifying contest. Semiotics seems to have been a notoriously English
enthusiasm back then. Locke wrote some fascinating things on arbitrariness
in his Essay. Hegel did too in his Encyclopaedia I think. Peirce too.
Husserl too. Even Humes (independant?)rediscovery of the Aristotelean
taxonomy of kinds of association could be seen as another consideration of
arbitrariness - again under the concept of convention or custom. I am not
sure but I suspect that, like Columbus, Saussure made the innocent mistake
of thinking that he had discovered the science of and the arbitrariness of
signs. Certainly many after him thought he was the first to bump up against
this great philosophical and much trodden continent.

Arbitrariness is a wonderfully puzzling concept. People may say that
arbitrary signs should not be confused with conventional signs. I would risk
a quick translation of arbitrary as that which contains a more convoluted
and cryptic historical genesis than we can untangle. At least, that is an
expalntion of why what we call arbitrary strikes us inexplicable other than
by custom. But to turn from this to film.

Film as moving image seems to be the antithesis of an arbitrary sign. As
Ruiz says (and Bazin, and many many others) it is part of the long tradition
of capturing images, virtual realities, total cinemas. Still, there is no
doubt that in the history of cinema it has been seen as part of its
maturation that arbitrary signs - conventions - quickly became available to
signify things that were otherwise incommunicable. Dissolves, fades, certain
emblematic uses of images, and most importantly, even the very cut between
shots contain their portion of arbitrariness.

Montage as opposed to mise en scene might be seen as that which entails and
facilitates arbitrariness in cinematic signification. Meanwhile cinema is
such a non arbitrary semiotic medium that, in its mis en scene and its sound
track, it is always just showing arbitrary signs (eg speech, writing, etc)
as its second nature.

Ross